From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Oct 22 16:06:17 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:06:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1N16jY-00007Z-Og for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:06:17 -0700 Received: from mail-pw0-f47.google.com ([209.85.160.47]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1N16jV-000079-Ti for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:06:16 -0700 Received: by pwj10 with SMTP id 10so1814701pwj.26 for ; Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:06:05 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=FNCRqJDcOoXQG6QsSvJb47lYo+KPQeDwE4PKBigkWAo=; b=fwy2KIYAacsesIEsLKyqNVb+v1+LdpJ/iERTP5eCrSSqtoeS6FXeLYCLGIFrHuBwI2 joZ/csDqH36twLFJR3/CILfBN6lk5JYxWS9JheavnyofMpZ7SBRgJjSanKK/3fG074xt 742COqWvJQdWnY8Gco70y9ecc0ia+sybvArz4= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=Gke3r57bGU94pcc9EIzh4UdolKEOpznSbSuRiyN9PhbORN/IYyHpLuGa3DmVV14nnm TWLPNOPl/EM5NKrnVVh4BLBNuv8wB1HJrAKxIRVO45owufUMFddxo+9k39Zo6Fw059cg naLNav4upxxITDhF8B9I3ipv2OAaEBPLWK48I= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.142.1.24 with SMTP id 24mr608952wfa.8.1256252765892; Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:06:05 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <5715b9300910221536o6c0b268fr5317e25634f1edc9@mail.gmail.com> References: <5715b9300910221536o6c0b268fr5317e25634f1edc9@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:06:05 -0300 Message-ID: <925d17560910221606v3b6697f9pacecee1df20b0d5d@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban] Re: vagueness vs ambiguity From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?= To: lojban-list@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis X-archive-position: 16387 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: jjllambias@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Luke Bergen wrote: > So I've heard people say in the past "lojban is vague, but it is not > ambiguous". Don't believe everything you hear! Lojban is syntactically unambiguous, which means any grammatical utterance can be parsed in one and only one way. Semantically unambiguous? I don't think so. > But what is the difference exactly? An ambiguous sentence is one that can have two or more distinct meanings, a vague sentence is one that doesn't have a precise meaning. > "John and Jim played a game.  He lost".  I've heard this example used to > explain how english is "ambiguous".  But how is this different from {la djan > joi la djim kelci lo lo nunkei .i ra toljinga} which I guess is "ambiguous"? Not very different, except I would tend to interpret the last part of the Lojban as "They lost". (Shouldn't the x2 of kelci be lo selkei rather than lo nunkei?) mu'o mi'e xorxes To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.